THE MAN FROM NOWHERE: A Ferocious Return To Heroic Bloodshed

Hong Kong action fare of the 1980’s and 1990’s has long been praised by cult movie fans and crit­ics alike for its dis­tinc­tively styl­ized take on action sequences.  The Chinese approach to stag­ing fights and gun bat­tles has since become part of action cinema’s lin­gua franca, right down to Hong Kong direc­tors and fight chore­o­g­ra­phers being imported to the U.S. to beef up Hollywood’s action scenes.

However, those vin­tage Hong Kong action flicks weren’t just about stag­ing: they often blended hard-hitting scenes of vio­lence with the kind of deliri­ous, heart-tugging emo­tion­al­ism not seen since the days of Douglas Sirk.  This style was dubbed Heroic Bloodshed: its blend of melo­drama and bru­tal­ity might sound like an odd mix on the sur­face but the two work together beau­ti­fully when blended prop­erly.  For proof, look no fur­ther than John Woo clas­sics like The Killer or A Better Tomorrow.

Heroic Bloodshed has long since ceased to be a defin­ing trend in Eastern action cin­ema but its influ­ence pops up from time to time.  A great recent exam­ple is The Man From Nowhere, a Korean film that retools this Chinese for­mula to smash­ing effect.

The plot is rem­i­nis­cent of Man On Fire and focuses on the tra­vails of a man and a child.  The Man is Cha Tae-Sik (Won Bin), a reclu­sive pawn shop owner.  The Child is Jeong So-Mi (Sae-ron Kim), a spir­ited lit­tle kid who befriends the blocked-off Cha in spite of him­self.  Her friendly bravado is the cover for a mis­er­able home life, which revolves around an inat­ten­tive drug addict mother.  When the mother gets caught up in rip­ping off drug deal­ers, she inad­ver­tantly drags Cha and So-Mi into her trou­bles.  The deal­ers kill the mom and kid­nap So-mi, using her as a pawn to manip­u­late Cha into becom­ing a patsy for the mom’s mur­der in a dar­ing plan that also involves tak­ing out a rival drug dealer.

Unfortunately for the deal­ers, they wildly under­rated Cha.  He’s got a dark past and a unique set of vio­lent skills that make him the wrong per­son to screw with.  He busts out of jail and set outs to find So-mi, who has been sold off into Korea’s crim­i­nal under­world.  Along the way, the viewer learns about the tragedy that haunts Cha and makes him so deter­mined to find his young friend.

The end result con­jures up fond mem­o­ries of the Heroic Bloodshed style: the plot­line feels like the kind of thing John Woo might have done back in the day and it deliv­ers both on the action and unabashed sen­ti­men­tal­ity fronts (the last five min­utes goes for the audience’s tear ducts in an appeal­ingly shame­less way).  However, it also mixes the styl­ized approach to action — best illus­trated by a show­down in the bath­room of a packed club — with other scenes that take a grit­tier approach.  The finale in par­tic­u­lar is stag­ger­ing in how fero­cious its vio­lence is, per­haps a reflec­tion of how the hero’s dark­est impulses have been brought up by his ordeal (look out for the mem­o­rably grim knife-fight that caps this scene).

The Man From Nowhere is also anchored by two brac­ing lead per­for­mances: Won Bin makes an excel­lent mys­te­ri­ous hero, play­ing his cards to close to the vest in the first half of the film and dis­play­ing a con­vinc­ing sense of cool­ness under pressure in the action scenes.  However, his char­ac­ter thaws over time and his work in the film’s lat­ter scenes has a real emo­tional punch.  Equally wor­thy of praise is Sae-ron Kim, who gives the audi­ence a much-need iden­ti­fi­ca­tion fig­ure in the brave yet qui­etly vul­ner­a­ble young hero­ine.  Like her co-star, she also deliv­ers some pow­er­fully emo­tional work in the film’s final scenes.

Finally, Jeong-beom Lee’s script and direc­tion keep every­thing focused.  He builds his sto­ry­line from arche­typal ele­ments but lay­ers them together in a sur­pris­ingly com­plex style: there’s a big ensem­ble of char­ac­ters that Lee man­ages with skill.  He also struc­tures the film’s tricky sequence of events in a lean, effec­tive style.  Most impor­tantly, his direc­tion blends sleek visu­als and gritty con­tent to potent effect — again, the final set­piece is the best exam­ple of this dual­ity– and he gets col­or­ful per­for­mances that keep the story engaging.

In short, The Man From Nowhere is a nice throw­back to the days of Heroic Bloodshed, one that har­bors a few sur­prises in its stew of clas­sic ele­ments.  Anyone who yearns for the visceral/emotional one-two punch of clas­sic Hong Kong action fare should check it out.